I don't understand otherwise well-meaning liberals who continue to eat meat

Great Debates
41

Yeah, the total miles my chicken travels is a lot less than the grocery store chicken. There’s more human labor involved, and it costs more. But I’m extremely dubious that it burns more carbon.

(The people who slaughter it are also better paid and have better working conditions than at the big meat processors. It was actually the pandemic that made me switch over. I read about all the pressure on meat packers to keep the meat supply coming, and the mortality of the workers early in the pandemic, and i didn’t want to fund that. So i switched to all sources where i had reason to believe the slaughter house workers weren’t being abused.)

42

It would be surprising if it weren’t true. Stuff tends to be expensive when it takes a lot of resources–often, just human labor. All else being equal, hand-picked food is going to be far more damaging for the environment than mechanized picking, because you have to account for all the costs of all of those people (which may be especially high in a rich part of the country).

I’m all for reduced meat consumption, but in the case of water use specifically it’s not as cut and dried as meat=bad, veggies=good. Consider:

Chicken takes 180 liters per 100 calories. Rice, generally considered a cheap staple food, takes 190 liters/100 cal. Olives are 240. Apples 170.

Sure, other plant food does much better (though according to their data, crickets do by far the best). But it’s not always a complete night-and-day difference. Someone eating a modest amount of chicken isn’t doing that much worse than someone with a pure vegan diet. They might even be a little better, if the chicken eater avoided the most water-thirsty plants but the vegan did not discriminate.

43

Cutting off meat isn’t easy at all to many people. I have gastro-intestinal issues that make non-animal protein sources such as beans, but also stuff like wheat a no-go. My wife and my kids are the same, and so are countless millions of other well-meaning liberals.

Meat is one of the few foodstuffs that doesn’t create any problems, so we eat a lot of meat. We thrive on it, feeling physically and mentally satiated. Much of it, but not nearly all, is hunted meat from the woods close by.

44

Humanity isn’t worth saving if we all have to be vegetarian. And I’m not really joking (much) when I say that.

45

There are agricultural areas that don’t mine water to grow food. The problem is that, when you switch from small scale mixed farming to monocropping square miles, or growing broilers by the ten thousand, it’s hugely more damaging to the environment, not just water but nearly every (other) living thing is sacrificed where megafarms operate. It’s hard to quantify just how damaging monocropping is, from the dead soil to the lost habitat to the toxic runoff. Big Ag says, well there just is no other way to feed people, but there’s never been any attempt to do so. The opposite, in every way. Mixed farming, permaculture, grass-fed livestock, are at a huge political disadvantage here, which makes it extremely difficult to gain any economic advantage.

I am sure that a gigantic reorganization of agricultural practices will be necessary if we are to survive as a species. I was sure of it fifty years ago and nothing whatsoever has happened in the interim to change my mind. And yes, a less meat-based diet will have to be part of it, but there’s a wide expanse between beef every day and veganism.

46

I consider myself a life-long liberal, and I am not a vegetarian. I tried it when I first moved out, and while I didn’t do it right (I simply ate what I already did, without meat), I did realize pretty quickly that this was not the right way for me to eat. I NEED meat to feel my best. (Sorry, animals.)

47

After a lifetime of eating meat on a regular basis - sometimes with every meal - it takes time to really change habits and make the change stick.

Meat producers are doing everything they can to keep people eating meat.

And in my case - I have multiple food allergies, all to plants. This makes getting necessary nutrients solely from plants extremely difficult. Since I am unwilling to destroy my long-term health or die I will likely continue to eat some animal products, at least occasionally, for the rest of my life.

^ Also this.

If it makes you happy - now that I’ve finally figured out which legumes are a problem for me and which aren’t I’ve been eating a LOT more beans and now have about 10 different varieties in my kitchen I’ve been using all year. It’s not that I’m unwilling to eat plants, it’s that I really don’t want a third round with anaphylaxis, thank you very much. I’m am allergic to some very common food plants, unfortunately, but not (as of yet) any type of meat.

I’ve also been eating a lot of venison lately instead of other meat, given to me by hunting friends who live in Michigan where the deer population is out of control and needs to be culled. If we’re going to cull them why not eat them?

48

It’s difficult to push the idea that an individual needs to give up something that they enjoy and is a large part of their life for benefits that the majority of people don’t even seem to want. It’s even worse when the people who push it tend to also have other agendas involved, like finding eating meat to be unethical.

I would argue that most of the things that people are willing to do to reduce environmental impact is a lot easier. Turning off lights, using less plastic, recycling, and so on all require little overall change. Driving less saves you money on gas, while eating vegetarian (if you go beyond the basic rice and beans) tends to get more expensive, in my experience. You have to give up a lot of convenience foods to avoid meat, too.

And then, yes, you have the cultural issue. So much of our social interactions are around food. I’m hanging out with people a lot less since my diet got even more restricted (by GERD and other stomach issues). Food is generally shared, often made by others for you, and often purchased already prepared.

Honestly, even disruptive things like biking to work seem a lot easier than getting rid of meat altogether. The reason for the flexitarian idea is that people are much more willing to reduce consumption than give up entirely. And if that isn’t helping, that’s more likely to make people stop trying than it is to get more vegetarians.

Unless society invests on making vegetarianism a lot easier, it’s going to be difficult for such a change to occur. That’s probably where you should start, and not try shaming liberals for eating meat. Shame makes you tend to go back to comfort.

49

It’s interesting to compare this thread to the one about conservatives and fossil fuels.

50

Is it? Per chicken, I mean. Yes, there’s lots of waste, but if your local farm is employing a bunch of low-wage people that themselves consume resources (including food from mega-agrocorps, since they can’t afford anything better), you aren’t necessarily better off.

Personally, I think we have to eventually switch to indoor farming. Food production shouldn’t require more water than what’s physically in the final product. Farming is just rearranging atoms. But traditional farming of all kinds is absurdly wasteful and 99+% of the water simply evaporates or sinks into the ground or ends up in waste that’s thrown away. Indoor farming can capture all of that (except what exits the facility as food).

51

I’m trying to say that if you just price it out, tangible resources consumed per chicken, you will not be able to see how growing food can heal land rather than impoverish it, can empower communities rather than separating them from the non-human-made world. If you change your paradigm. We are talking paradigms here.

52

Now I’m picturing chickens wearing tiny little stillsuits from Dune, recycling their own water. :smiley:

53

You might want to think out the biodynamics, indeed fundamental biochemistry of that statement.
Cause complying with that would rule out all plant production as well. Probably life on the planet to boot. Think about it next time you go and take a piss.

54

Well, ok. There’s no technical response I can give to that. To me, food is just a manufactured product. I object to it being done inefficiently or if there is cruelty (to humans or animals) as a side effect. But “empowering communities” isn’t a meaningful phrase to me.

I should have phrased that more carefully. Food production shouldn’t require more water than the mass of the final product. Some of those atoms will have been rearranged into sugars, of course. But you can’t get more mass out than you started with.

55

Two pithy bits come to mind:

  • Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
  • Nothing is particularly ‘green’ when held up to close scrutiny

Mom cooked chicken – about 15 different ways. Dad was a Grill Guy – about 15 different kinds of beef. When I was on my own, I went veggie (I think it was ovo-lacto-pesca-vegetarian, technically), but was never preachy. I was just ‘over’ meat.

Decades later, I was taking an overnight first-class bus in Central America. I was sure to secure my veggie meal … which … as it turned out … was never even a thing. It was dinner, then sleep, then wake up. No food stops and I was starving.

Boom. Ham and cheese sandwich (I needed the calories, so I consciously didn’t opt to strip out the ham).

I could have switched right back, but didn’t. I have a largely plant-based diet now.

As part of a former life, I’ve visited a number of abattoirs. I was that version of veggie at the time. Everybody was horribly amused that a veggie had to tour a slaughterhouse. I wasn’t sickened, but it isn’t a pretty sight to see how beef gets to our plate.

[It’s something I think people ought to see and understand. It’s one thing I admire about hunters who hunt as a food source]

So I try to do many/most things better than I did yesterday or last year.

But Jeff Goldblum (Michael, in “The Big Chill”) was right:

Michael : I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.

Sam Weber : Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.

Michael : Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

56

Guilty as charged here. I figure I have <10 years and want those ten to be carnivorous to whatever extent makes me happy
as possible.

57

Your problem is not your phrasing.
Your view is that as illustration, that 1kg of lettuce, of which the final product is 95% water should require no more that another 50g of water to grow from a seed to harvest.

Life on earth doesn’t work that way. Cellular life is not possible.

58

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Producing 1 kg of lettuce does not require more than 1 kg of water. If, hypothetically, it required 100 kg of irrigation, >99 kg would still be recoverable from the atmosphere or the growth substrate or other places.

Indoor farming already achieves order-of-magnitude increases in water efficiency. It’s not yet practical for staple crops, but it is still early days. And they can achieve even higher efficiencies as the technology improves.

59

It is not intended as a counter-argument, but the case of Amy’s Kitchen suggests the hypocrisy can run in both directions, as this organic, vegan food company is notorious for terrible labour relations and conditions. And while “labour” is regarded as just another economic input, like machinery and raw material, in the immortal words of Charlton Heston, “it’s people.”

60

950g of the 1000g of lettuce IS water. Where does that 95% of the final product come from?
You are allowing for zero respiration/transpiration/evapouration in the life of the plant.